Since the An-Cap thread was so popular, might as well give it a shot with An_Com. I'll start out with two basic premises to answer the inevitables that will be asked.

My beliefs rest on two suppositions, both of which address the use of force in our society. We use force to keep people working and we use force to keep people from doing what we don't want them to do. It is generally assumed in day to day life that these two forces must be perpetually applied to keep everyone happy. Unfortunately, these applications of force also give us most of what we are not happy about in the first place!

1) All motivators to lever force against those who do not contribute are useless.

When I go to work I loathe having to get ready, drive out, and start my shift... But the fact that I do always makes me very happy in retrospect. Working hard makes one feel valuable. Useful. It gives someone a reason to live. People would be very depressed without a job to do because it is in our nature to enjoy working.

Under Ancom, a person's prestige and honor would be based off of how successful they were in the community. Someone who is rather productive would be assured:- the utmost attraction from the opposite sex- to be taken care of in times of strife, without the need for insurance.- respect and admiration amongst the community- ability to participate in the things they work on directly. For instance, if I'm into boating, I will make sure I dedicate a small chunk of my time out at the docks helping out and learning whatever I can. Then, it would be understood that I would get some use of them recreationally at some point. The key here is the ability to be able to donate your help freely without going through all the barriers and risks and administrative nightmares of today's rules and regulations-based system.

People would be a lot smarter being able to donate time at will into their interests! What would you do if suddenly given the opportunity to drop your day-job and contribute to only what you wanted to? Instead of spending money on the things you like, people should be contributing their skills to the things they like. We would be a whole lot more skilled and we would be educated in a way that we cannot achieve today. A person produced in a community like this would have a much more ubiquitous understanding of all the workings of industry.

2) All laws to lever force against those who would commit unjust acts are useless.

"Getting away with murder" is an interesting phrase I often hear. It seems that all people have this quest to punish those who have committed heinous acts. They feel like someone is getting away with something and if they don't step in and punish them then a small tear in the fabric of morality will tear open and threaten to consume us all.

So what would happened if I murdered someone and then got away with it scott-free? Everyone knows I've done it but there are no laws to hold me directly accountable. Am I now violating some moral law by not being physically punished? What good does this punishment do?

I would argue that it is impossible to get away with anything scott-free. How would I enjoy life after committing a murder? No one would want to associate with me, and I need association to be able to live because I can't do it alone - no man is an island (unless you're Ragnar then you can live off of grubs and berries in the woods). I could feel guilty about it and have internal damage from the experience. Probably most importantly, people would want to kill me.

Crimes of lesser extent carry proportionally lesser natural consequences. Speeding in a car puts a small increase of risk of pedestrians' and other drivers', but the vast majority of the risk is concentrated on my own safety. Anything that is counter-productive or hurtful carries negative by-products that disincent. Combining this with the afore-mentioned freedoms and enlightenments associated with a healthy, sustainable society, and we have a very low likelihood of anyone being in the position to commit crimes.

That unwarranted assumption just shifts the problem to the opposite sex rather than solving it.

to be taken care of in times of strife, without the need for insurance.

No, the com in ancom implies that working has no connection to whether you are taken care of at any time. Anything else is renumeration, which concedes the whole game.

respect and admiration amongst the community

Who gives a ****? Not the kind of person who produces great things.

ability to participate in the things they work on directly

In a world where slackers exist, and you are trying to address that problem, you cannot address it by making work the motive for work. It isn't a solution, it's just the assumption of an alternate reality where the problem wouldn't even be conceivable.

The key here is the ability to be able to donate your help freely without going through all the barriers and risks and administrative nightmares of today's rules and regulations-based system.

No. Without rules I will behave avariciously, and your system is toast from the get go. You need rules to stop me. I guarantee it. And if you can convince people that they need your system, they'll probably ignore such minor details and fill it up with rules to stop me, insure that we don't even get far enough to ask why I'd do something so worthless just because no one was stopping me.

When I go to work I loathe having to get ready, drive out, and start my shift... But the fact that I do always makes me very happy in retrospect. Working hard makes one feel valuable. Useful.

That would probably not be enough for you to work, let alone work as often as you do, if working hard did not also get you STUFF.

So what would happened if I murdered someone and then got away with it scott-free?

You found the urge to murder unsuppressable once. You doubtless will again. And we all have the urge to murder sometimes. Most of us just suppress it. Why bother in a world where it's not true that "Consequences will never be the same?" Murder would be about as common as, well, trolling the interwebs.

No one would want to associate with me

People associate with murderers NOW. They even pressure people to murder, by shunning those who don't. It's called a street gang. This is with consequences for murder, imagine how it would be without.

Probably most importantly, people would want to kill me.

That's the same urge you just got done deriding. You can't abolish that urge and then rely on it.

It came to be at its height. It was commanded to command. It was a capital before its first stone was laid. It was a monument to the spirit of man.

The economic calculation problem. Without prices and wages, how is one to determine how to allocate resources efficiently?

Also, will property rights exist?

Also, you state that the most productive people in society will be the most likely to get laid? Why do you think the opposite would screw others because of labor rather than some more obvious factors (charisma, fun personality, hot body).

Is there private ownership of land, and if so how would conflicting land claims between neighbours be solved. Apparently anarcho-capitalism has no way of settling routine interpersonal disputes so I wonder if An-com does.

I am voting for Innomen because of his intelligence, common sense, humility and the fact that Juggle appears to listen to him. Any other Presidential style would have a large sub-section of the site up in arms. If I was President I would destroy the site though elitism, others would let it run riot. Innomen represents a middle way that works, neither draconian nor anarchic and that is the only way things can work. Plus he does it all without ego trips.

An AnCom society would be open to an innumerable amount of customizations. I couldn't actually be able to say how it would be done. However, in a system where society is allowed to evolve without coercion, the right solutions are more likely to find their way through than they are now.

At 3/2/2011 5:22:21 AM, Cerebral_Narcissist wrote:Is there private ownership of land, and if so how would conflicting land claims between neighbours be solved. Apparently anarcho-capitalism has no way of settling routine interpersonal disputes so I wonder if An-com does.

That unwarranted assumption just shifts the problem to the opposite sex rather than solving it.

People are attracted to those who are talented.

to be taken care of in times of strife, without the need for insurance.

No, the com in ancom implies that working has no connection to whether you are taken care of at any time. Anything else is renumeration, which concedes the whole game.

I think you mean remuneration, but anyhow, the community will know who contributes and who doesn't. That is for sure. You'll know if I went out of my way to help produce the computer that gets you on the internet every day.

respect and admiration amongst the community

Who gives a ****? Not the kind of person who produces great things.

Shall we debate the worth of respect and admiration?

ability to participate in the things they work on directly

In a world where slackers exist, and you are trying to address that problem, you cannot address it by making work the motive for work. It isn't a solution, it's just the assumption of an alternate reality where the problem wouldn't even be conceivable.

Two things:1) Most of the products we make, from flow-bies to sham-wows, are not totally necessary to society - we only experience scarcity (practical, not theoretical) because of all the useless trash in our society. Look at it this way: if 50% of the American population became pure free-riders overnight, we would still not be adversely affected if all the useless products in our economy were not bothered with. Everything from banking to sham-wows to paper plates to prostitution is a waste that is only possible becauze capitalism creates a monetary incentive to do it.

2) Work is a motive for more work. I experience this physically every day. Today is wednesday; I do not work. I will not feel as good tonight as I would on Tue or Thu when I drag myself in and put some hours into being productive. Getting through with a shift at work keeps us alive; when Sunday rolls around and I'm tired then I can enjoy it. You can't enjoy the weekend relaxing in comfort if you haven't worked through the week.

The key here is the ability to be able to donate your help freely without going through all the barriers and risks and administrative nightmares of today's rules and regulations-based system.

No. Without rules I will behave avariciously, and your system is toast from the get go. You need rules to stop me. I guarantee it. And if you can convince people that they need your system, they'll probably ignore such minor details and fill it up with rules to stop me, insure that we don't even get far enough to ask why I'd do something so worthless just because no one was stopping me.

I don't need rules to stop you. If you lived in an AnCom society then you would would ask yourself "what can I do to succeed?" "Succeed" can be the interest of being able to enjoy physical pleasures, psychological pleasures, or whatever you want. For instance, this conversation you are enjoying now isn't something you can buy, you have to study and argue and study and argue and continue to learn in order to participate in these discussions. You needed to work at it. You haven't received any money yet at your age for your intellectual pursuits, you only are getting the ability to enjoy the natural fruits of your efforts independent of money. You can say that your goal all along has been money I suppose, but really that doesn't detract from my point: arguing with me here isn't making you any money.

When I go to work I loathe having to get ready, drive out, and start my shift... But the fact that I do always makes me very happy in retrospect. Working hard makes one feel valuable. Useful.

That would probably not be enough for you to work, let alone work as often as you do, if working hard did not also get you STUFF.

Working could still be somewhat set up that way... the activities you wish to participate in will be the ones you seek to be productive in.

So what would happened if I murdered someone and then got away with it scott-free?

You found the urge to murder unsuppressable once. You doubtless will again. And we all have the urge to murder sometimes. Most of us just suppress it. Why bother in a world where it's not true that "Consequences will never be the same?" Murder would be about as common as, well, trolling the interwebs.

There are several reasons to believe AnCom would be less violent than currently:1) less incentive for crime (no property)2) citizens are more intelligent becasue they aren't raised into poor families3) citizens are more liberated4) People are more interdependant and aware of each other because of cooperation within community to produce. Therefore we have less instance of random strangers being about causing trouble for unknown reasons.5) Dog police XDXDXDXDXDXDXDDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXDXXD6) You are underestimating the natural detriments to committing murder as well as the artificial subsidies our system grants to people who commit crimes.

No one would want to associate with me

People associate with murderers NOW. They even pressure people to murder, by shunning those who don't. It's called a street gang. This is with consequences for murder, imagine how it would be without.

That's the same urge you just got done deriding. You can't abolish that urge and then rely on it.

If someone does go out of their way to murder someone for some crazy reason (perhaps their spouse cheated on them with someone) then investigations will commence as to how and why it happened as they do now (you don't need a gun to do that). If the person is innocent they will be open and cooperate. If they aren't they will either be uncooperative or be implicated scientifically. The point is that ALL aspects of the situation can be weighed. This can't be done under rules. Every crime is different and each one should be democratically decided, town hall style, by those in the community wishing to hear the case. It doesn't need to be determined as a crime beforehand, the town will gather regularly anyway to discuss items of interest and democratically decide how to handle them. And yes, if the person is a complete psychopath who is just going to continue to kill then by all means let the town vote to decide to take him outside and give him a quick death.

At 3/2/2011 4:52:37 AM, darkkermit wrote:The economic calculation problem. Without prices and wages, how is one to determine how to allocate resources efficiently?

Instead of using a round-about way of getting to proper allocations, it's up-front. Simply take what is needed.

However, without wages and others trying to make a profit, the stuff that is needed will be in shortage or even non existent.

1) the stuff that is needed is already in shorage or even nonexistant. Just not in the DarkKermit household, this second.2) See free-riders argument in my last post. Most of the stuff we produce today is entirely unnecessary and even undesirable. The problem is not free-riders, it is wanton consumption as well as senseless production.

Also, will property rights exist?: :

No.

Then how do you prevent the tragedy of the commons.

The Tragedy of the Commons is precisely what this system is designed to prevent. The Tragedy only exists when property rights are given while nature is free. Now you can follow Ragnar and start figuring out ways to allocate each tree and each squirrel in it and each stream and each fish in it to some privatized entity (and for the squirrel's sake it better hope it's not divied out to Ragnar) or we can just realize it was stupid to create the property that caused the Tragedy in the first place.

The Tragedy is only problematic because each person who draws on the commons is trying to sate individualistic desires. Communism dictates that everyone is going to want to enjoy all the land, so any incentive to abuse a piece of it is met by discrimination from everyone. In capitalism, 'everyone' has no say in how you degrade the commons.

At 3/2/2011 5:22:21 AM, Cerebral_Narcissist wrote:Is there private ownership of land, and if so how would conflicting land claims between neighbours be solved. Apparently anarcho-capitalism has no way of settling routine interpersonal disputes so I wonder if An-com does.

There would not be.

Instead of private property, I would like to see private territory. One occupies territory one parcel at a time. It is not able to be handed down to children, although if the community is warm to the idea then go for it (it just isn't automatically). Parcels will be set up prior to construction of the community as a whole so fairness can be built right into the system from the get-go. All parcels will be environmentally planned. I couldn't find any pics online in a quick search but environmentally planned neighborhoods are fabulous places to live. They are designed to maximize space by sharing yards and incorporating parks into them. Supply stores are dispersed thorughout the neighborhood instead of outside it so owning a car becomes a luxury. Anyone who lives in a place like this would be horrified to have to go back to the normal grid-style segregated housing we have now with tiny fenced in yards.

And those kids get put in time-out. This is a great point actually. Toddlers have this inclination to say "mine" a lot (a habit that is often hard to break in them), and this is probably where most of the damage to you people occured. Decades later I'm trying to teach you lessons that should have been ingrained when you were 2 years old and low and behold I can't do it. Some things naturally only have one user (clothes, bedroom) but that doesn't mean we have to assigne some libertarian sense of property rights to it.

At 3/2/2011 8:44:55 AM, PARADIGM_L0ST wrote:Rob, how do you propose equally distributing goods to a population in excess of 310 million people, some in very remote places?

AnCom works fairly well for a village, but without a government you neither have any legal borders. So who takes care of who?

I'm guessing Rob wants people to live in small, largely self-sufficient communities.

Correct. The crux of my argument is that this is not an arbitrary aspect of my economic plan; it is the natural state of humanity in every sense. Macro justice doesn't work, but town-hall style forums where rules do not dictate action it can. Large cities destroy the natural ecosystem; overcome resource supplies; export waste; create crime and pestulence. Large communities become powerful and require government, which in turn becomes corrupt and oppressive.

Communities will take care of themselves. By working together, the citizenry become tightly knit and interdependent. They are smarter because they run the community instead of being run by it. Their decision-making process will be based on a lot purer motives than that of capitalists competing with bureaucrats.

At 3/2/2011 1:14:33 PM, Rob1_Billion wrote:Correct. The crux of my argument is that this is not an arbitrary aspect of my economic plan; it is the natural state of humanity in every sense. Macro justice doesn't work, but town-hall style forums where rules do not dictate action it can. Large cities destroy the natural ecosystem; overcome resource supplies; export waste; create crime and pestulence. Large communities become powerful and require government, which in turn becomes corrupt and oppressive.

Actually, most environmentalists agree that big cities are less damaging. Everything is closer, which means less transportation, economies of scale make things more efficient, etc.

Well lets say that a peoples have already established property rights. What is your relation to them?

And those kids get put in time-out. This is a great point actually. Toddlers have this inclination to say "mine" a lot (a habit that is often hard to break in them), and this is probably where most of the damage to you people occured. Decades later I'm trying to teach you lessons that should have been ingrained when you were 2 years old and low and behold I can't do it. Some things naturally only have one user (clothes, bedroom) but that doesn't mean we have to assigne some libertarian sense of property rights to it.

Would every individual town have the materials to create computers, grow all kinds of fruit, raise all kinds of animals, and build all kinds of clothes? Would you have pencils? Would individual communities make their own paper?

It is odd when one's capacity for compassion is measured not in what he is willing to do by his own time, effort, and property, but what he will force others to do with their own property instead.

Possession is not the same thing as property. Property is an invention of the state; a concrete principal for deciding the means by which people take possessions. I suggest a flexible way of allocations, not rigid and unbending.

At 3/2/2011 1:14:33 PM, Rob1_Billion wrote:Correct. The crux of my argument is that this is not an arbitrary aspect of my economic plan; it is the natural state of humanity in every sense. Macro justice doesn't work, but town-hall style forums where rules do not dictate action it can. Large cities destroy the natural ecosystem; overcome resource supplies; export waste; create crime and pestulence. Large communities become powerful and require government, which in turn becomes corrupt and oppressive.

Actually, most environmentalists agree that big cities are less damaging. Everything is closer, which means less transportation, economies of scale make things more efficient, etc.

At 3/2/2011 6:43:56 PM, TheAtheistAllegiance wrote:How do you plan to settle disputes over scarce resources without property,

With market pressures out of the way, a society can be organized according to truly efficient resource uses. Renewable energy would rule. Also, with artificial scarcity out of the way there would be no disputes over materials which the resources exist for producing.

and how do you plan to deal with serial killers?

The vast majority of violent offenders and those perpetuating anti-social behavior is a result of their up-bringing. Achieving the society I propose already assumes a paradigm shift in culture. Once the society is set up it would be difficult to move in the wrong social direction again due to removing market scenarios that create unruly individuals, such as poverty and market-power inequality.